Food

Okay, so I've talked about food and cooking a lot as of late.  There are many reasons for this:

1. I'm hungry all the time as I'm pregnant.
2. Cooking/baking is my main hobby.
3. I enjoy this hobby and try to not complain on the internet about things I don't like doing, so you hear about it.
4. It's an adventure to see what the small child will eat and when.  He has no problem with cheese or fresh vegetables, but it's interesting to see which meat will be okay.
5. I find it interesting to read about food and find recipes, so I think I should share them, but mostly I share that I'd like to share them.

Today, that last reason changes.  Here are recipes (and some pictures) of recent food projects in the house.  The kitchen really.  Where I spend much of my time barefoot and pregnant.  Although, to be fair, I'm pregnant everywhere.  Barefoot too.

There are a lot of similarities to these foods as they are an attempt to get vegetables and meat into one small person.

Sausage Rolls

Sausage mince (that's the filling for traditional sausages)

Zucchini

Celery

Carrot

An egg

Breadcrumbs

Seasoning (I usually use herbamare)

Mustard, dijon or hot (optional)

Puff pastry (about 4 sheets, but it really depends on the amount of filling you've made)

Grate the vegetables finely, add the mince, breadcrumbs and seasoning to achieve a dryish texture, add the egg to bind it all together.  Cut puff pastry in half, and make ropes of sausage which you lay across the middle.  Then roll them up into cylinders, cut in half and bake at 200 C for 20-25 minutes, until pastry is golden brown and meat is nicely cooked.

You can also throw in a can of peas, carrots and corn or whatever other vegetables you're trying to hide.  I just love celery, carrot and zucchini.

Perogies

A very wonderful lady called Odesa gave me this recipe.  Odesa, nothing compares 2 u.

Easy dough

A container of sour cream

Flour 

Add flour to sour cream and knead until you achieve a nice stretchy dough.  It was around this point when I thought, hmm, I don't have a lot of dough for the amount of filling I have...

Filling

Fried onion, 1 cup before frying

6 Potatoes, I used 3 royal blue and three white

Fried bacon, crumbled

Grated cheese

Frozen spinach blocks

Boil potatoes and spinach.  Drain off water, add other ingredients and mash, mash, mash or blend, blend, blend.

Cut the dough into circles, fill to full and stretch the dough to close, pinch firmly.  Drop in boiling water.  They should float soon.  If they don't float, they aren't fully closed and are turning to gloop.  Rescue them quickly.

After they have all boiled and dried, fry in butter and serve with sausage and sour cream.  Or in my husband's case, hot sauce.  I ended up having about three times as much filling as needed, so made puff pastry circles and baked those perogies, rather like pasties.  And with the leftovers, I made mashed potato patties.

Left, pergoies. Right, pasties.

Homemade Pizza and Garlic Fingers

I got the recipe from here and aside from hand kneading and using 2 cups of whole wheat flour and one of white, I followed the recipe.  It really does work well.  I made pizza from scratch again last night and my son clapped when it came to the table.  That's good for one's soul.  For toppings, we use any and all of the following: salami, green olives, grated/chopped zucchini, grated carrot, sliced capsicum (red), fried tomatoes, basil leaves, swiss brown mushrooms, bocconcini balls, mozzarella, leftover roasted vegetables, etc.

Garlic Cheese Fingers

Yorkshires

This is not my recipe to share, but I had to show them off.  They popped out of the pan while baking and I thought they might amuse Vanessa who gave me the delicious recipe to begin with.  It was a nice night with roast beef and vegetables.  Little fellow even ate a yorkshire!

They look more like popovers than when I made popovers, oddly enough

Chicken Nuggets

This is the little fellow's favourite, so I make them every week.  I try different things sometimes, like crumbing them in polenta, but apparently we all hate polenta.

General breading mixture

Panko breadcrumbs

A pinch of salt and pepper

Italian herbs

Cut two chicken breasts into small pieces.  Dip in flour.  Dip in beaten egg.  Dip in breadcrumb mixture.  Pan fry until golden brown on both sides and cooked through.

Chicken Nuggets.
On the left they are dipped in panko crumbs, the right, wholewheat crumbs

Back in the day, I would have used a similar breading (but with paprika) on beaten chicken breasts, to be used as schnitzels or (once fried) topped with freshly chopped tomatoes, onion and garlic, more seasoning and a bit of pasta sauce and heaped with mozzarella and cheddar, baked in the oven for half an hour.

I do miss grown up food sometimes.  I could really go for some spinach cannelloni today.

White Fish, often Snapper 
Ruby is the best, but Queen's good too.  Okay, Orange Roughy is the best, but I'm not allowed to have it.
This is another breading mixture I use a lot.  It started as a Jamie Oliver recipe.

Breadcrumbs

Extra virgin olive oil

The juice and zest from a lemon

Salt and pepper

Freshly grated parmesan cheese

Dip, dip, dip, fry.  Make tartar sauce.  Yum.

Rissoles/ Hamburger Patties
500 grams of ground beef (beef mince)
Finely chopped broccoli florets
Grated carrot
Finely diced onion
Breadcrumbs
Egg
Seasoning

Mix all together.  Shape into patties.  Pan fry or barbecue until cooked through.  The little fellow ate these on Tuesday.  It was the first time he'd eaten hamburgers or rissoles.  Felt like Christmas.

And that, my friends, is that.  

(The photos aren't great, I usually take them really quickly when we're half done as I remembered that wanted to put them up.  Plates by IKEA.)